Listening to and Acting on the Words of the One Coming, First Thursday of Advent, December 1, 2022

Fr. Roger J. Landry
Columbia Catholic Ministry, Notre Dame Church, Manhattan
Thursday of the First Week of Advent
December 1, 2022
Is 26:1-6, Ps 118, Mt 7:21.24-27

To listen to an audio recording of today’s homily, please click below: 

The following points were attempted in the homily:

• At the beginning of the Advent Season, as we pray, “Come, Lord Jesus,” “O Come, Divine Messiah!,” “O Come, O Come Emmanuel,” the Church selects Gospel passages to help us learn the proper dispositions to enter into the meaning of this season and get off to a good start in this new liturgical year. But it’s not enough to get us to cry out with hunger and longing to bid the Lord to come. In today’s Gospel, Jesus says to us very clearly, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the Kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.” We need to build our life on him as he comes. “The Lord is an eternal Rock,” Isaiah tells us today. The Psalm adds, “The Lord is God and he has given us light.” The Lord is the solid, stable, unchanging foundation for life, the God who not only is “Light from Light,” but shares that light with us so that we may walk as children of light. Isaiah will tell us on Christmas night that the “people walking in darkness have seen a great light,” and that light is the Lord. Our Advent construction project is to build our life on that rock who gives us that light.
• Jesus uses an image today, taken from his conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount, about how we’re supposed to live what he teaches. “Everyone who listens to these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock.  The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted the house. But it did not collapse; it had been set solidly on rock.” That’s what our response is supposed to be to Jesus’ triple coming: to build our life on his taking on our humanity so that we may share in his divinity; to construct our existence on Him in the present, in his Word and in especially in the Word-made-flesh as the source and summit, the root and center of Christian life; and to ground our hopes, aspirations and daily choices in the guarantee of his second coming and to live, as we’re reminded to live each Advent, vigilant and alert each day for his return. Not everyone lives this way. Many are foolish: we hear his Word, we may even be able to cite chapter and verse, but we don’t act on it. Jesus says, “Everyone who listens to these words of mine but does not act on them will be like a fool who built his house on sand.  The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and buffeted the house. And it collapsed and was completely ruined.” The true Advent response is Mary’s, which, as we will hear on the Solemnity of her Immaculate Conception a week from today, in response to the Archangel Gabriel’s words, said, “Behold I am the Lord’s servant. Let it be done to me according to your Word!”
• To build our whole existence on Jesus requires great trust, because Jesus’ words are different than the world’s. It’s challenging to build our life on the word of forgiving seventy time seven times, to love our enemies, to love others as God infinitely loves us. It’s hard to build our life on the commandments, the corporal and spiritual works of mercy and especially the Beatitudes. But hard does not mean impossible. And God gives us himself to make the difficulty lighter and sweeter. God encourages us to do so today. “Trust in the Lord forever!,” God tells us through Isaiah. “A strong city have we; he sets up walls and ramparts to protect us.” The Psalm adds, “It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in man. It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in princes.” Advent is a season for us to act on that trust and the reasons for it. Advent is a season to build our life on Jesus’ words to stay awake, to strive to enter through the narrow gate, to seek first the kingdom of God and his holiness and everything else will be given to us besides.
• Today, on December 1, we have two examples of what it means to build one’s life on God’s word. The first is St. Edmund Campion, who died on this day in 1580 as a martyr in England. He heard the call of the Lord to be a priest and acted on it. He heard Jesus’ words to Peter that he would build his Church upon him and labored, as a hunted priest in England to care for the Catholics after Henry VIII tried to take over the Church and his henchmen murdered SS. John Fisher, Thomas More and many others. The second figure is Bl. Charles de Foucauld, who died on this day in 1916, killed by Bedouins in Algeria where he had gone to pray and to try to establish greater fraternity among Christians and Muslims. At 32, after a career in the military and as a geographer, he heard the Lord’s call to conversion, to holiness, to unity and gave his life and death to it. Both show us what it means to respond to the Lord’s summons and to build their life on the rock of God’s word and God’s very person.
• God gives us a daily opportunity to build ourselves on him at the Mass. In the Liturgy of the Word, God wants us to ground ourselves anew on the rock of God’s word, provided that we try to live the word we hear rather than merely say in response to it “Thanks be to God” and “Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ.” We’re called, like Mary, to respond, “Let it be done to me according to your word!” Then we come to the Liturgy of the Eucharist and have the chance to construct our life on this gift, on Christ himself, so that he can shine his light from the inside out of us. Finally we have the chance, in communion with him, to build our life on the words of his great commission, to go in peace, announcing the Gospel of the Lord and glorifying the Lord with our life. May we respond to this great privilege and build ourselves firmly on Christ with trust so that no matter what storms come, we will be set firmly on Christ and come to experience eternal tranquility in the house that God has built in heaven for all his beloved children.

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